Good article on D&D (all editions)

[dutch206]

This is a great article, but it is seven pages long.
Truth about 4th edition

I'd like to discuss this without it turning into a flame war, if you don't mind.
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[Orpheus]

dutch206 wrote:
I'd like to discuss this without it turning into a flame war, if you don't mind.

It's already too late...
I read that a few days ago, and I think that it's a pretty good interview. Whether you like 4th Edition or not, I think that the designers really went out of their way to try and incorporate concepts that would appeal to plug-and-play gamers and offer a new experience for combat.

I like the fact that there are so many defined options within combat and that it has become very tactical without being, in my mind, tediously tactical like in 3.5. In 3.5 you would roll to hit just like in every other edition, but a feat might give you a different effect if a certain condition was met. There was simply more page-flipping and conditional triggers for things. It's like applying the tax code.

In 4e, there's more moments where you can attack normally with fairly vanilla at-wills, but when you really want to reach down and give it to the big guy you can use an encounter or a daily. I just see it as giving the player options to their roll-to-hit attacks. The resource management concept that they talk about in the interview; I think that it works well without requiring all of the page flipping. Honestly, when we play, we hardly every crack a book.

I like the idea that combat is tactical and that's the only place where I want it to be. I think that aspect of combat is fun and it plays out very fast when we do it. I like the roleplaying to be involved and fun, and laced with intrigue. When it's time to fight and kill, I want to be able to pull some cool moves and see if I can pull off a killing blow at the right moment.

Of course, we frequently use the openness which is explicitly implied in the DMG: Make it up! We do this constantly. We've had Warforged jump off of balconies onto the bad guys and do damage while making an attack. It makes sense to us. This edition feels very open to experimentation to me and it is encouraged throughout the the PHB and DMG.

We have one dude who has only played 4e in the few sessions that we've had; it took him no time at all to catch on to what was going on. That's the type of play that they're looking for when they talk about going for the "short attention span" gamer. I don't think that they mean ADHD dumb asses as others have implied, but just that folks now are used to the "tutorial level" in video games, and they just want to hop in and play. This is what I like about C&C as well, but 4e gives you a different experience.

I like 1e, 2e, C&C and 4e, but I think that they really went out on a limb with this edition and came away with something good. It's not perfect, but I'm having a ton of fun playing this edition.

[Breakdaddy]

werd

[dutch206]

I was amused by how they bent over backwards trying to avoid discussing Pathfinder. LOL
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[Breakdaddy]

Theres not much for them to say. They are pushing their own active product and dont want to have to discuss someone else's active product that is in more or less direct competition with them. I dont blame them. I wish that some of the old 3rd edition developers that didnt work on 4e would get together and do a blog or interview on how they feel about the transition. That would be awesomes.

[Steerpike]

Not a bad interview. Seems to me they also wanted to avoid giving really candid answers on the OGL generally. I'm thinking WotC probably regrets it.

4e designers have done a nice job given the kind of game they wanted to design. But it's just not for me. I've played I don't know how many different RPGs since the early 1980s, and I've never had less fun than I had in the sessions of 4e I either ran or played.
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[Sir Ironside]

dutch206 wrote:
I was amused by how they bent over backwards trying to avoid discussing Pathfinder.

Well, seriously, the response could only realistically go two ways. They'd have to be negative about it or just a bunch of canned neutral comments. The first would be interesting, the second would be as interesting as listening to a half an hour of most professional sports players fielding questions.

No thanks.
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[DangerDwarf]

I found this particular bit interesting:
Y'know, it's not even just the new gamers. I've been playing D&D for, well, let's say a lot of years, and my attention span isn't what it used to be either. It's not about youth, it's just about the culture we live in and what we're used to.

I find that a particularly interesting aspect of our hobby. Culturally, much has changed over the past 30 or so years and so have many folks expectations and wants. You see it all the time on message boards in what I refer to as the "games as technology" views some people express wherein you hear things like "we know better now" or such.

Hell, even our terminology has changed to reflect this new culture. Things like (and I HATE it), using the whole v1.13454 type speak by refering to editions as "e's" and such. The whole cultural shift has changed how we talk, think about things and even play so it has an effect on how games are developed as well.

Hell, even how our fast paced, highly mobile society gets around any more you don't see as many long lasting campaigns. At least not in the sense we had when we were kids where a campaign would last several, years (I can remember playing the same campaign 6-7 years way back when), anymore that is the exception and not the rule. When playing outside my family, I plan mini-campaigns instead of long reaching ones simply to account for the transient nature of players any more.

RPG's are a very social hobby, so with societal shifts, its interesting to me on how the hobby does as well.

[ThrorII]

This article really reinforces what I already thought of D&D4$. It is a board-gamey, WoW-like game for short attention spanning gen-nexter's, which was concieved for $$.

Not that 3.x was any better. It took all the fun out of DMing (3 hours to stat out NPC's and monsterr, anyone?), and made character creation a long term 'business plan', thinking 3-5 levels ahead at all times. Plus, with subrules for every rule, it made cribnotes necessary for me at the table.

I'll keep my C&C, thank you very much.

[Lucifer_Draconus]

Nice article...still VERY leary of 4e but I decided to recheck out 4e from the local library. Maybe make a character this time & run a combat or two with my brother who has played 4e & liked it. For me it's ..I have no other options for fantasy gaming locally beyond 4e or 3.5 ( the RM2 game I'm in is on hiatus, so I'm playing Angel/Buffy right now). So I'll give it a try , if I still can't stand it. I can say I gave it a fair chance. I still prefer to play C&C over 4e.

The article did give me greater insite to why they did what they did. Doesn't mean I agree with it. I may end up looking into their D&D Essentials , if I end up liking 4e, as I prefer rules-lite gaming.
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RIP Gary Gygax you will be missed.

[Go0gleplex]

Well...all I can say about the article is that it seems mis-titled and left me unimpressed.
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Baron Grignak Hammerhand of the Pacifica Provinces-

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[concobar]

I like 4e but have devolved back to a more BECMI game using the labyrinth lord rules.
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